By the very groovy, wise, entertaining Vi Hart
Category Archives: TO BLOG
Turning off comments
I have a troll stalker — defined as someone who is too scared to say what they want to say using their real name. Tower climbers and the like – their hatred is so profound it has no limits. They hit and hit and hit until they think they’ve hurt you — but if you’ve been around the internet block you learn to ignore them. Dealing with trolls is part of the internet experience. If you put yourself out there you will, sooner or later, come into contact with the worst (and the best) humanity has to offer. But it’s not how I wish to spend my time.
The Pioneer Woman and Dooce as Different as the GOP and the Dems
I have long since reconciled my irritation with the success of both Dooce and The Pioneer Woman. The reason being, I read both of their sites every day. I learn from both of them in very different ways. Though Pioneer Woman often talks about her family and her community and how much working on a farm means to her, Dooce offers me much more for my internal, intellectual world. But I can’t really criticize Ree Drummond for what she has built. But she is a brand, a product, a totally indifferent-to-politics representation of wholesome America. You can’t really even say “white America” because she goes out of her way to represent different ethnicities on her blog whenever possible. I do notice the effort. But she is the Republican ideal. Dooce, on the other hand, is my people.
Today she had a speech by Joe Biden on her website. Biden paid tribute to the victims of 9/11. Ree Drummond, by contrast, could never ever, not with her right wing demographic (home schooled, church-going folks here) even mention our President or our Vice President. The same way Willard Romney could not mention the men and women serving in the military, dying at the rate of 6,600 for both wars so far, during his acceptance speech at the RNC. They can’t mention it because, despite America being the land of freedom of speech, the members of the GOP have to keep their mouths SHUT for fear of being A) shunned, or B) helping, in any way, to get the President re-elected.
To Drummond’s credit, I know because I’ve been reading her for a while now, she didn’t exactly mention George Bush either. She simply refuses, ever-not ever- to engage in any sort of politics. She pushes butter-ladened fantasy life to lonely housewives all over the country. They get their butter-porn, their cowboy-porn, their baby pictures, their giveaways. It was no surprise that after building her “lodge” Drummond would start a show on the Food Network. Look, she has every right to rise in her career – she got there through nothing but hard work, folks. Same goes for Dooce, who is now a single mother after her marriage broke up. Dooce, who talks about all of the things that really and truly dog most of us, stuff you can’t bring up on a fantasy-driven romance novel of the site that Drummond has.
I was moved by Dooce’s tribute to 9/11 and it made me think that I like how free she is to say what is on her mind. And I wouldn’t trade that in a million years for a chance to live in a fantasy with a hot dude in Oklahoma. Money and success, to me, would only be satisfying if it meant I was getting something meaningful across to people. Maybe that success will happen to me, maybe it won’t.
In the end, I appreciate both of these bloggers and admire the hell out of both of them. They get up every day and they get to work. They show us a slice of their lives. I like having the choice of both. But if I had to choose, Sophie, I’d grab Dooce because I find, more and more, I turn to her for emotional and intellectual relief. I like how she thinks. I am dazzled by the things she finds on the internet to share and I immediately share them with my various social networks. She thinks, therefore she is.
Facebook = Life Ruiner
After dwelling on the pages of Facebook for a while now I’m mostly convinced it’s a life-ruiner in all respects. You have to see, on a daily basis, all of the things you were never meant to see. It’s sort of like finding the secrets to life after death, or discovering the awful truth about Santa Claus. There are just some truths you really don’t need to know.
It’s strange that, for instance, you have to know the whereabouts of all of the people you’ve ever known in your life.
It’s strange that, when people die, their Facebook pages stay up. People write on them as a kind of floating memorial. And Facebook helpfully suggests you friend a friend of a friend who is dead. The online person, the Facebook person, lives on. The real body goes. So now we have the body, the soul and the Facebook identity. It’s weird, isn’t it? It’s different elsewhere online because Facebook is the only place where you are confronted with everyone you’ve ever known, all of your family, and the people you’re networked with, as well as just random strangers. Who you are on Facebook is now part of who you are period. And it’s freaky.
The first weird thing that happened to me recently was that a fried of mine from my childhood friended me then got frustrated when that magical relationship we were supposed to have wasn’t rekindled. I’m busy, yo. And so she wrote on my page, “too stuck up.” So I unfriended her, just like that. And harmony was restored in my life. She was one less ghost from my past I had to worry about.
But the thing I hate most about Facebook is the way people torment each other. They use status updates to taunt their successes — my daughter’s friends in middle school all flaunted and taunted with the various high schools they were accepted into. Like just being able to do that on Facebook was the key. It’s a little puddle of ego and narcissism where that shit can fly around virtually unchecked.
When you have a relationship you change your status update and then break up via status update and everyone has to know about it. Well, that’s one thing. What’s worse is if you happen to hook up with an asshole who then pretends you don’t exist and never changes that relationship status. So then you have to see how little you matter on a daily basis. Worse, you have to watch that person actively flirt on their own profile page. Or if you get dumped you have to watch that person flaunt their latest exploits with dumb, show-offy pictures. One guy I know only reflects himself as someone who would attract only pretty girls and thus, every picture that is associates with his online persona is some kind of idealized beauty; none of the women he actually dates ever appear because that would then lower his status online.
So what is the good Facebook has to offer? I don’t really know. To me I use it mostly for work but I hate this notion of everyone knowing every little piece of my business. It’s weirds me out on every level. I worry for the generations that are growing up with this idea that you have your regular life and then you have a Facebook identity to cultivate. Everything you do has a societal echo that passes praise, likes, judgements…everyone puts on a fake happy face, like here are all of the good times I’m having that you aren’t having. Here is my great marriage that you don’t have. I don’t know how I would have survived with the added dimension of Facebook.
I just don’t think we ever really stopped to think about what the longterm effects of something like this might be. Oh well. There are surely worse thing in life. For now, though, I’m practicing disassociation.
Because the Night, Because the Day
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
In the days of the internet you have shadow versions of yourself floating around out there. You aren’t just the one person. You are who you always wanted to be. You say everything you always wanted to say. You never have to be imprisoned by the confined misery of the hand you were dealt.
When two personas try to meet in real life, though, they have to reconfigure themselves into who they really are. And it’s a roll of the dice whether or not those two people can get along or not. Sometimes they can live in deluded ecstasy together. As in, their individuals pretend selves become the collective pretend couple.
This kind of living has pretty much finished me. I just want you, the internet, to know this. After fifteen years online I’ve finally come to the conclusion that “warts and all” is the way to go in life. Just get all messy and sloppy in it. There is no benefit that lasts just being in it for the ego boost. We must be bigger and better than our egos. Think about what an ego must look like, what it would like if it was actually manifested in human form. You know it would not be nearly as big, as hot, as cool, as all-powerful as it thinks it is. No, it is cowering in the dark, afraid to do anything that might risk it losing at life. The ego: it’s the little man behind the curtain and it offers you nothing back except a lifetime of unrealized expectations.
Except that ego drives us to do all sorts of things. I think that evil little sack of shit drives my own creativity sometimes, the doing of this bloggggggg, wanting to have a voice “out there.” I know it drives rock stars and movie stars. But trust me, when it gets down to happiness – look elsewhere.
I finally went back to yoga after a long break. What a relief that was. In yoga you have to fight your ego at every turn. You’re in the front row showing off or in the back hiding. You’re doing the advanced pose or the modified one. But my ego drove me to the point where I injured my shoulder and couldn’t do it anymore. So not only am I in the 1/2 class and no longer in the 2/3 class but I slapped myself down and put myself in the back row.
I am trying to get life right. I make mistakes every day. I wake up hating myself. Then I wake up okay with it all. What I do know is that there probably isn’t ever going to be a happy ending for anyone until they practice what the Buddha teaches. Ahem.
• What is the First Noble Truth?
The first truth is that life is suffering i.e., life includes pain, getting old, disease, and ultimately death. We also endure psychological suffering like loneliness frustration, fear, embarrassment, disappointment and anger. This is an irrefutable fact that cannot be denied. It is realistic rather than pessimistic because pessimism is expecting things to be bad. lnstead, Buddhism explains how suffering can be avoided and how we can be truly happy.
• What is the Second Noble Truth?
The second truth is that suffering is caused by craving and aversion. We will suffer if we expect other people to conform to our expectation, if we want others to like us, if we do not get something we want, etc. In other words, getting what you want does not guarantee happiness. Rather than constantly struggling to get what you want, try to modify your wanting. Wanting deprives us of contentment and happiness. A lifetime of wanting and craving and especially the craving to continue to exist, creates a powerful energy which causes the individual to be born. So craving leads to physical suffering because it causes us to be reborn.
• What is the Third Noble Truth?
The third truth is that suffering can be overcome and happiness can be attained; that true happiness and contentment are possible. lf we give up useless craving and learn to live each day at a time (not dwelling in the past or the imagined future) then we can become happy and free. We then have more time and energy to help others. This is Nirvana.
Oh hi, Nirvana. I’m looking for you. Help me find you, will you? I love this notion of the “imagined future.” This is a trap. The old “when this happens, this other thing will happen.”
The fact is that life washes over us every day and we barely notice it. The sun comes up and it goes back down. Light washes the landscape and then it goes dark. And every day our body keeps track of the time passing. We feel things start to fade. We age. And that is all. But if we can be right here, right now, well then maybe – just maybe – we will kiss the tip the nirvana occasionally.
I feel better now, internet. Thanks for being here, my imagined self, my projected self, my real self and mean crumpled old ego thank you too. Oh, memories. Oh, sweetness.
